Posts Tagged ‘military’

Under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, the Obama Department of Justice has been on a rampage against the states, hauling them into court over a range of issues. Among the most notable attacks are against states’ voter identification laws. Texas, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Florida, Arizona and others have been sued by the chief federal law enforcement officer – charging that requiring a photo id to cast a ballot was among other things, racist, attacking the poor, the elderly, etc. The reality is far, far different. Besides multiple ballots cast by single individuals and voting by people who do not live in the state they’re voting in, illegal immigrants, dead people, felons, and others not legally entitled to vote are doing so.

Never mind that the TSA requires government issued photo id to board an airplane. As does every state for obtaining a marriage license, driving a car, purchasing alcohol, etc. Those complaining the loudest about how Republicans are meanies trying to stop blacks and poor from voting are the Democrats – the Obama administration in particular. Oddly, the Democratic National Convention requires a photo id to obtain credentials to access the convention.

Meanwhile, Eric Holder successfully sued the state of Ohio over early voting for burdened military – a state law specifically designed to help deployed military enjoy their right to vote. The United States Department of Justice under the leadership of the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces – President Barack Obama – fought and won to stop early voting accommodations for military members. A judge more recently ruled that the early voting must be opened to everyone, that there is nothing special about being in the military.

Now comes word that the 2009 law, signed by President Obama to help military voters overseas, is severely underfunded.

The Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act was passed by Congress in 2009 and signed into law by President Barack Obama and was supposed to make it easier for both soldiers deployed overseas and U.S. citizens living abroad to cast ballots back in their home states.

One of the key provisions required each military branch to create an installation voting assistance office (IVAO) for every military base outside an immediate combat zone.

But the Pentagon’s inspector general, the military’s internal watchdog, reported Tuesday it got a disappointing result when it tried to locate such voting assistance offices on each installation earlier this year.

“Results were clear. Our attempts to contact IVAOs failed about 50 percent of the time,” the inspector general reported. “We concluded the Services had not established all the IVAOs as intended by the MOVE Act because, among other issues, the funding was not available.

Wrapped up in identity politics, Obama and the left will trot out the military when they need the optics, but when it becomes more politically expedient, will hold them hostage by making sure defense spending takes a massive, unprecedented cut if Republicans don’t agree to increase social welfare spending by some arbitrary deadline. ObamaCare? Not for our men, women, and families in uniform. Obama wants massive cuts to TriCare for active duty and retired military.

The left and their media lapdogs howl that Republicans and conservatives are out to suppress the poor, latino, gay, black, purple, triangle-head, and pink canary vote. There is one group disenfranchised, whose vote is actively and quietly being suppressed by the left, the one group whose sacrifice should bring us to move heaven and earth to ensure their vote counts: those who are serving our country in uniform. It is the least we can do for those who volunteer to make the largest sacrifice for our freedom.

[On Memorial Day] we may ask our children to remember those who gave the utmost level of devotion to secure our freedoms. But we mostly don’t talk among ourselves about the fact that names are still being added to the list of the lost, names that until recently belonged to people, but now belong to memory, belong to the ages. Names that once brought smiles to parents’ faces and light to a lover’s eyes but now bring only a whistling blow to the pit of the stomach for those who loved them. Names that now signify a vast, empty, mournful space that actual people used to fill.

Just in time for Memorial Day, some MSNBC drone named Chris Hayes has lit up the internet with his confession that dead American troops don’t quite measure up to his exacting standards for what qualifies as a “hero.” Memo to Chris: they are heroes, and you don’t get a vote.

Though he may be shocked to hear it, America’s fighting men and women don’t care whether Chris Hayes considers their fallen comrades heroes or not. First, there’s the practical matter that almost no one – in uniform or out – watches MSNBC or the roster of progressive meat puppets that fill the short stretches between endless reruns of “Lock Up.”

But on a deeper level, our troops don’t do what they do to impress the likes of Chris Hayes – though he is perfectly willing to make his living in the shadow of their sacrifice. In the scheme of things, Chris Hayes’s views are important only as an object lesson in what our progressive elites really think about our military.

This is what NBC and the rest of the liberal elitist types think of our military. As Kurt points out later in his article, they simply don’t say it because their guy is in office right now, and because Americans – even those who weren’t there – remember how the left treated Vietnam veterans when they came home, and rightly react viscerally.

Chris Hayes might not think our troops are heroes. I might think he’s a self-absorbed, myopic, ungrateful whelp who couldn’t possibly fathom the sacrifice that provides and ensures his freedom to bloviate on television.

Simply put, the left hated George W Bush for more reasons than I have room to list. Some legit, mostly not. They assured and crowed about the new era of relationships with world leaders under President Obama, so severely soured under President Bush that they were virtually irreparable. One of the great savior of the world Obama’s first acts was a mind-numbing insult to our closest ally – the return of a post-9/11 gift to the British.

“In their place, I would think two and three times before sharing with the Americans, and then only do it if I had to. The problem with that dynamic is that you don’t know what you don’t know, and what opportunities you might be missing when you decide not to share. The Americans are doing a very good job of undermining trust, and the problem starts at the top.”

The timing of the information about the CIA’s foiling of a would-be bomber just a few days after Obama’s victory lap trip to Afghanistan to visit US military who fight on his behalf seemed odd. Now we know why.

A new era of foreign relations. If by “new era” you mean acting time and again to ensure that our British friends may never trust the United States of America again, then yes. We’re in a new era.